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Archive for July, 2006

subject minus

posted by Susie Applegate -

My meeting with Subject Minus blew away most of the preconceptions I may have had about EcoSurvival Village. I guess that I had expected the humorless, world-on-my-shoulders leftist types I had encountered as a reporter in California. But, these folks seemed to be mocking that whole depressing scene.
    â€œThat’s the whole point, in a way,” said Minus, when I put the question to her, piercing me with intense, black eyes from the shadow of her hat brim. “You can’t let the world get to you like that. You have to laugh at yourself, and the circus around you. You have to laugh at God. Otherwise she will destroy you with the weight of her indifference.”
    Such wisdom for someone so young! I thought, although I never said so, because, almost as soon as the idea came to me, I had a concurrent thought. It was that these people were playing a game of some kind, the purpose of which I wasn’t allowed to know. In our afternoon together, Minus never revealed to me her real name. She never once diverged from her role as the earnest Zapatista poet. Her dark eyes and thick, black hair caused me to believe that she was either Native American or hispanic, but she responded to this line of questioning with more enigma, saying, “I’m from the tribe of the dispossessed.”
    After leading me around the construction site, and introducing me to several of the young workers, Minus took me to The Compound, about a mile further up the road. The old trapper cabins were dilapidated, and looked uninhabitable to me. The larger one she called “the dormitory,” and the other “the war room”. She explained to me that this was where most of the permanent members of the community stayed, and that when the main camp was finished they would improve The Compound as well.
    When I questioned her about the “war room” and its militaristic moniker, she said, “We are at war. The capitalist system, as it exists, is a threat to the people of the world, and to the very essense of life itself. It is like a cancer, you see, eating the body which hosts it.”
    â€œNow we believe in non-violence,” she went on, “but that does not mean that violence won’t happen. In fact, it is happening every day this system continues. It is a violence against the poor and the dispossessed. We are the otras, the others whom the system would like you to believe do not exist. But we do exist. And we will survive. And one day we will take back this earth from the destroyers, and we will heal it. You see, our beliefs are not that different from that little girl, your Germaine.”
    I have to admire the idealism of these young people, who come from all around the northwest. Some are country kids, like those in Germaine, and some are from Portland, Spokane and Seattle, and know little about rural life. But they are united in a belief in a better world.
    I can only hope that they are wrong about global warming and looming disaster, yet I think it would be foolish to just write off the dangers that confront our world. A lot of Germainers have their eyes closed to evidence right in front of their noses simply because it conflicts with their pre-conceived notions, or with biblical edicts, or with their comfortable livestyle.
    On the way back down the hill I met a woman in the village who was introduced to me as “Dr. Rosa.” She had light brown hair with streaks of gray, and appeared to be in her 60s. Her slight foreign accent was unplaceable. Something about her seemed familiar, although I couldn’t say what that was. Minus merely said, “Dr. Rosa will be opening a weekly clinic soon,” as she whisked me away toward my waiting vehicle.
    I felt as though I had been deliberately hurried away. And now I have another mystery. I’ll have to visit that clinic when it opens. I have this chronic curiosity problem, and maybe its time for a checkup.

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the reject army of poetry

posted by Susie Applegate -

In 1994, Wilbur County experienced an initiative measure which would oblige the county government to become an advocate for appropriate technology and organic agriculture. Spearheaded by Harlan McCoy, and invoking the mythical words of little Germaine Van Bibber, the political campaign captured the imagination of many folks in the area.
 
     Due to the success of Measure 49-16, and the financial largesse of Harlan McCoy, there has been a small renaissance in the Tamarack Valley which has had the effect of drawing a lot of new folk to the county, including an assortment of kooks, charlatans and environmental activists from the city. Many Germaine old-timers can see no difference among the lot of them.
 
     One group which has recently taken up residence calls itself EcoSurvival Village. Ostensibly, it is a kind of retreat for environmental activists, but they have achieved a certain noteriety by engaging in guerilla actions, such as infiltrating community events in order to spring surprise poetry attacks.
 
     Now, some of us find this all fairly amusing, but there are others who might be more inclined toward a lynching. The same folks who were alarmed by the coming of the Newagers, and convinced that the Cherokee Nation of Wilbur County was another Rajneeshpuram, are now totally freaked by the “eco-terrorists” in our midst. According to Deputy Hintertiel, the Sheriff receives two or three calls a week regarding “those wackos up on Dead Mule Butte.”
 
     With all of the controversy, and all of the fidgeting fogies festering in their stew, Dad decided it was time to send his only daughter into the mouth of the volcano –the mysterious terrorist compound. Thanks, Pop! (In truth, I thought it would be a fun and interesting assignment, and I wasn’t disappointed.)
 
     EcoSurvival Village is about 2 1/2 miles up the old Van Bibber Logging Road #2 from North Plains Junction. It is erected on the remains of an old CCC camp built during The Depression. The CCC workers forged trails and constructed a few campsites further up into the Ochocos, so the American people would have the opportunity to appreciate the great forest they owned. Then, after WWII the government traded the land to the Van Bibber Timber Company, which used it as a logging camp from which they then turned the great forest into a stump farm. When the VBs were through with the woods, they put it on the market, where it languished for thirty years, until it was purchased by a Portland land trust.
 
     Beyond the Village, a little further up the road on Dead Mule Butte, is The Compound. This is a couple of old trapper cabins, where several permanent members of the Village are rumored to live. At EcoSurvival Village I was to meet with someone named Subject Minus, who would take me to The Compound for an interview.
 
     When I arrived, it was just before 2 pm, my scheduled appointment time. The Village hummed with activity. Porches and rooves were under repair, railings being fortified, earth turned. It was great to see so many young people creating, and I wished that I had arrived a little earlier so that I could talk to a few of them. But promptly at two a young woman approached, wearing a low, floppy hat and a scarf around her face like some wild west outlaw.
 
     “Susie Applegate,” she said, “I am Subject Minus.” She said this without the slightest hint of humor, although I thought I detected the faintest sparkle in her eye. We shook hands. “Here are the rules,” she went on sternly with almost no pause, “One: nothing is as it seems. Two: the enigma is the true answer. Three: take nothing seriously. Four: take everything seriously.”
 
     She paused and added, “And five: poetry is the highest form of language.”
 
     I smiled and she started laughing. “We call it The Five Rules of the Rejection Army of Poetry,” she said.

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